Notes on Film Revolts

The moment in Renoir’s “Boudu Saved From Drowning” when the titular Boudu is finally readied for the terminal acclimation to bobo aesthetics, almost arranged marriage, and place in monied society nearly all romantic comedies gravitate toward with the sort of single minded doomed determinism that makes something like Melville’s “Le Samourai” seem loose and easy going by comparison, and decides to reject all of it to go be a hobo with his dog again.

Film moments re: revolt #2:

Godard’s unreluctant willingness to loathe his rural militarist protagonists in “Le Carabiniers”. The singularly unpatriotic tone of the film is most famously summed up in the inverted shots of fireworks. A revolt against the well-meaning lies and sentimentality of earlier war films, even the purportedly anti-war ones.

Film moments re: revolt #3:

Bruce Conner’s montage in “Report” shifting between the Kennedy assassination, a matador killing a bull, and a space age refrigerator commercial. A revolt against the commercial transmigration of the dead. I sometimes fantasize about another universe where Reagan was actually assassinated and Conner made a spiritual sequel. As it was, Reagan died much later, with most of the press up to and including NPR eulogizing him beatifically. Having died of old age I guess he was entirely the refrigerator.